Irrationalism and Deductivism in Science
I thought I would use today’s post to share the above reading list which was posted on the wall at the meeting I was at this weekend; it was only two days long and has now finished. Seeing the first book on the list, however, it seems a good idea to follow this up with a brief discussion -largely inspired by David Stove’s book – of some of the philosophical issues raised at the workshop.
It is ironic that the pioneers of probability theory, principally Laplace, unquestionably adopted a Bayesian rather than frequentist interpretation for his probabilities. Frequentism arose during the nineteenth century and held sway until recently. I recall giving a conference talk about Bayesian reasoning only to be heckled by the audience with comments about “new-fangled, trendy Bayesian methods”. Nothing could have been less apt. Probability theory pre-dates the rise of sampling theory and all the frequentist-inspired techniques that modern-day statisticians like to employ.
Most disturbing of all is the influence that frequentist and other non-Bayesian views of probability have had upon the development of a philosophy of science, which I believe has a strong element of inverse reasoning or inductivism in it. The argument about whether there is a role for this type of thought in science goes back at least as far as Roger Bacon who lived in the 13th Century. Much later the brilliant Scottish empiricist philosopher and enlightenment figure David Hume argued strongly against induction. Most modern anti-inductivists can be traced back to this source. Pierre Duhem has argued that theory and experiment never meet face-to-face because in reality there are hosts of auxiliary assumptions involved in making this comparison. This is nowadays called the Quine-Duhem thesis.
Actually, for a Bayesian this doesn’t pose a logical difficulty at all. All one has to do is set up prior probability distributions for the required parameters, calculate their posterior probabilities and then integrate over those that aren’t related to measurements. This is just an expanded version of the idea of marginalization, explained here.
Rudolf Carnap, a logical positivist, attempted to construct a complete theory of inductive reasoning which bears some relationship to Bayesian thought, but he failed to apply Bayes’ theorem in the correct way. Carnap distinguished between two types or probabilities – logical and factual. Bayesians don’t – and I don’t – think this is necessary. The Bayesian definition seems to me to be quite coherent on its own.
Other philosophers of science reject the notion that inductive reasoning has any epistemological value at all. This anti-inductivist stance, often somewhat misleadingly called deductivist (irrationalist would be a better description) is evident in the thinking of three of the most influential philosophers of science of the last century: Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn and, most recently, Paul Feyerabend. Regardless of the ferocity of their arguments with each other, these have in common that at the core of their systems of thought likes the rejection of all forms of inductive reasoning. The line of thought that ended in this intellectual cul-de-sac began, as I stated above, with the work of the Scottish empiricist philosopher David Hume. For a thorough analysis of the anti-inductivists mentioned above and their obvious debt to Hume, see David Stove’s book Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists. I will just make a few inflammatory remarks here.
Karl Popper really began the modern era of science philosophy with his Logik der Forschung, which was published in 1934. There isn’t really much about (Bayesian) probability theory in this book, which is strange for a work which claims to be about the logic of science. Popper also managed to, on the one hand, accept probability theory (in its frequentist form), but on the other, to reject induction. I find it therefore very hard to make sense of his work at all. It is also clear that, at least outside Britain, Popper is not really taken seriously by many people as a philosopher. Inside Britain it is very different,and I’m not at all sure I understand why. Nevertheless, in my experience, most working physicists seem to subscribe to some version of Popper’s basic philosophy.
Among the things Popper has claimed is that all observations are “theory-laden” and that “sense-data, untheoretical items of observation, simply do not exist”. I don’t think it is possible to defend this view, unless one asserts that numbers do not exist. Data are numbers. They can be incorporated in the form of propositions about parameters in any theoretical framework we like. It is of course true that the possibility space is theory-laden. It is a space of theories, after all. Theory does suggest what kinds of experiment should be done and what data is likely to be useful. But data can be used to update probabilities of anything.
Popper has also insisted that science is deductive rather than inductive. Part of this claim is just a semantic confusion. It is necessary at some point to deduce what the measurable consequences of a theory might be before one does any experiments, but that doesn’t mean the whole process of science is deductive. He does, however, reject the basic application of inductive reasoning in updating probabilities in the light of measured data; he asserts that no theory ever becomes more probable when evidence is found in its favour. Every scientific theory begins infinitely improbable, and is doomed to remain so.
Now there is a grain of truth in this, or can be if the space of possibilities is infinite. Standard methods for assigning priors often spread the unit total probability over an infinite space, leading to a prior probability which is formally zero. This is the problem of improper priors. But this is not a killer blow to Bayesianism. Even if the prior is not strictly normalizable, the posterior probability can be. In any case, given sufficient relevant data the cycle of experiment-measurement-update of probability assignment usually soon leaves the prior far behind. Data usually count in the end.
The idea by which Popper is best known is the dogma of falsification. According to this doctrine, a hypothesis is only said to be scientific if it is capable of being proved false. In real science certain “falsehood” and certain “truth” are almost never achieved. Theories are simply more probable or less probable than the alternatives on the market. The idea that experimental scientists struggle through their entire life simply to prove theorists wrong is a very strange one, although I definitely know some experimentalists who chase theories like lions chase gazelles. To a Bayesian, the right criterion is not falsifiability but testability, the ability of the theory to be rendered more or less probable using further data. Nevertheless, scientific theories generally do have untestable components. Any theory has its interpretation, which is the untestable baggage that we need to supply to make it comprehensible to us. But whatever can be tested can be scientific.
Popper’s work on the philosophical ideas that ultimately led to falsificationism began in Vienna, but the approach subsequently gained enormous popularity in western Europe. The American Thomas Kuhn later took up the anti-inductivist baton in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn is undoubtedly a first-rate historian of science and this book contains many perceptive analyses of episodes in the development of physics. His view of scientific progress is cyclic. It begins with a mass of confused observations and controversial theories, moves into a quiescent phase when one theory has triumphed over the others, and lapses into chaos again when the further testing exposes anomalies in the favoured theory. Kuhn adopted the word paradigm to describe the model that rules during the middle stage,
The history of science is littered with examples of this process, which is why so many scientists find Kuhn’s account in good accord with their experience. But there is a problem when attempts are made to fuse this historical observation into a philosophy based on anti-inductivism. Kuhn claims that we “have to relinquish the notion that changes of paradigm carry scientists ..closer and closer to the truth.” Einstein’s theory of relativity provides a closer fit to a wider range of observations than Newtonian mechanics, but in Kuhn’s view this success counts for nothing.
Paul Feyerabend has extended this anti-inductivist streak to its logical (though irrational) extreme. His approach has been dubbed “epistemological anarchism”, and it is clear that he believed that all theories are equally wrong. He is on record as stating that normal science is a fairytale, and that equal time and resources should be spent on “astrology, acupuncture and witchcraft”. He also categorised science alongside “religion, prostitution, and so on”. His thesis is basically that science is just one of many possible internally consistent views of the world, and that the choice between which of these views to adopt can only be made on socio-political grounds.
Feyerabend’s views could only have flourished in a society deeply disillusioned with science. Of course, many bad things have been done in science’s name, and many social institutions are deeply flawed. But one can’t expect anything operated by people to run perfectly. It’s also quite reasonable to argue on ethical grounds which bits of science should be funded and which should not. But the bottom line is that science does have a firm methodological basis which distinguishes it from pseudo-science, the occult and new age silliness. Science is distinguished from other belief-systems by its rigorous application of inductive reasoning and its willingness to subject itself to experimental test. Not all science is done properly, of course, and bad science is as bad as anything.
The Bayesian interpretation of probability leads to a philosophy of science which is essentially epistemological rather than ontological. Probabilities are not “out there” in external reality, but in our minds, representing our imperfect knowledge and understanding. Scientific theories are not absolute truths. Our knowledge of reality is never certain, but we are able to reason consistently about which of our theories provides the best available description of what is known at any given time. If that description fails when more data are gathered, we move on, introducing new elements or abandoning the theory for an alternative. This process could go on forever. There may never be a final theory. But although the game might have no end, at least we know the rules….
In the Dark 
March 11, 2024 at 6:11 pm
Even if we find a theory which is self-consistent (no ininities!) and consistent with all data to within experimental error, we would carry on looking for a further theory that does the same, but has fewer parameters needing to be estimated from the experimental data. In a Bayesian comparative hypothesis test, the latter theory would gather more probability and hence win.
March 11, 2024 at 6:12 pm
David Stove’s book mentioned above has been republished under the title Scientific Irrationalism: Origins of a postmodernist cult. You can read David’s summary of its argument in his own inimitable style at
https://www.unz.com/print/Encounter-1985jun-00065/
March 12, 2024 at 4:48 am
Hi Peter, I’m sorry I’m going to write a somewhat negative comment. I’ll try to start with a more relevant note.
Karl Popper is only widely regarded in England probably because he taught there. He was well known to engage in polemics against everybody, and his (and his pupils) attack against Kuhn (who wrote the most impactful book on philosophy of science on the 20th century) as well as his confrontation with the Franfkurt school, with a maybe a tinge of his connections to Hayek and neoliberalism, are probably the reason professionally only Britain cares, but in public conscience he is always there.
Regarding all 4 people mentioned in Stove’s book, it might be worth considering all of them lived through the second world war (and some fought on it) and it had a deep impact in their philosophy of science. Feyerabend was recruited in the army, and he spent the rest os his life blaming the educational system, from where his deep resentment towards authority come (I can provide primary sources for his politics). Both he an Lakatos expressed how Popper’s philosophy in anti-authoritarian and from this a source of inspiration. Kuhn, worked as civil consultant during the war has a more simple tone, and he explicitly says that the idea of his work was understanding the long endurance of Aristotle without thinking pre-modern people as iditots. You might think they are wrong (as I do), but you can understand the sentiment. Do note that only after the war it became common for most people to get tertiary degrees, and it was this swelling of academia that professionalized and depoliticized philosophy, so we now read only the arguments and not what’s behind it.
As for the negative, the reading list provided is weird. Some names are obscure. Others are problematic. David Stove is known for being light on sources and heavy on polemics (read any book review of his in and academic journal). What’s more, he surely defended science, but only to defend that races are real and women are less intelligent. When biologists tried to argue that altruism might have evolved he was ready to call it bullshit (he has a whole book on why altruism is bad). Likewise William M Briggs is known for his climate change denial, and I have just checked his website, he is complaining of losing a job as a expert witness because his climate change denial might hurts the defendants case.
I apologize for being negative, I don’t think you did anything wrong, and I’m happy you’re spreading Bayesianism. But I’ve been reading you for longer than I can remember, and it seemed to me you might like this kinda of extra information.
Negative comments like these tend to attract a lot of fighting, so if you want to delete this comment to avoid the hassle I fully understand.
I hope this finds you in good health
March 12, 2024 at 3:58 pm
I’ll just make a few comments in response.
First, I didn’t select the articles shown in the post; that was done by the workshop organizers. It is quite a strange selection, but it would be unfair of me to attempt to edit the list.
Second, Stove’s book was intended as a polemic, so I don’t see it as a criticism that it is precisely that. That book is the only one of his works that I have read and am not aware of his other views. (By the way what does “races are real” mean?)
William Briggs was at the meeting, though he was not one of the main speakers. Some of what he said in discussion made sense to me, other things didn’t at all. Several other attendees have minority views in their disciplines. My worry about the Broken Science Initiative would be if it became a vehicle for disgruntled scientists whose heterodox views are not more widely accepted because they are untenable and not because of the very real problems in modern science (including widespread abuse of statistics and the distorting effect of the academic publishing industry).
On the specific issue of climate change, I find it quite interesting that the same people who deny the climate crisis often also bemoan the influence of big Pharma companies on medical research without acknowledging the vested interests in the fossil fuel industry.
P.S. I got the distinct impression that many of the people at the workshop were far to the right of me, politically speaking, but it seems to me that the irrationality largely comes from their direction not mine!
March 12, 2024 at 4:35 pm
Cesar,
I too was at the conference. Regarding David Stove, I knew him personally and I agree with his arguments against Popper, Kuhn et al (which are solid albeit phrased polemically – happy to discuss) but disagree with his essay about women. He loved and treated well his wife and daughter.
I dislike the phrase “climate [change] denier”. I believe that the human race needs to transition away from fossil fuels for several reasons, but I question the urgency of the present claim. I’m happy to discuss that too. (My original field of research has some overlap with the kinetic theory that underlies the Navier-Stokes equations, and with what goes on in the higher atmosphere albeit above the weather.) I’ve not read Briggs on the subject, but I would ask anybody who labels someone else a ‘denier’ to present an unpremised binary proposition (i.e. a true/false statement) that the labeler holds is true but which the asserted denier has stated is false, giving a reference.
March 13, 2024 at 10:15 pm
It seems I’m stupid and my comments on Stove were put down below. Sorry for that.
Regarding Briggs. His website is wmbriggs.com, and I believe he is the same person as the one in the presentation, as the website says he is the author of the books mentioned. There you’ll find this post (https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/43718/) regarding his views on climate change, from where I’ll try to provide a proposition Briggs holds true and that I hold false.
To the best of my understanding, Briggs would like to mark a difference between climate change and global warming, so I need to give two propositions, one for each. According to Briggs A)”Climate change” has no empirical content, there is nothing to believe about climate change, the phrase is just meant to intimidate the population. He compares it with old pagan gods. This I hold to be false. B) A small increase in global average temperature means almost nothing, and even less than nothing (i.e. it’s a benefit). Furthermore, the only way to stop the human contribution to global warming would require the elimination of the human species. This I hold to be false.
While checking my sources to see whether I misrepresented the man, feel free to look for his opinions on race, gender, sexuality, religion, or whatever you like. The man is highly opinionated and makes Stove look like a paragon of politeness in comparison.
March 14, 2024 at 11:05 am
Cesar,
The only book of Briggs’s that I’ve read is his work on probability and statistics. There is so much division in this field that it’s simplest to say he and I are not in full agreement but have some major schools of thought as common opponents.
The climate debate is so multi-faceted that I’m not very interested in what any one man says. I don’t think anybody sane denies that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, whose effect on a dry planet is easy to calculate. Or that heating causes more evaporation of water on a wet planet such as our own. Or that water vapour is itself a greenhouse gas. The questions that concern me are: (1) what is the quantitative enhancement of the greenhouse effect of CO2 on a wet planet compared to a dry one? (2) is mainstream climate change research today over-emphasising the role of CO2 over other possible causes of global heating or cooling? (3) are the changes (‘data homogenisation’) made to the actual observed temperature data in order to account for Urban Heat Island effects etc, before these data are fed into today’s global climate models, legitimate? My own answers to these questions are: (1) the error bars on the answer are larger than the IPCC say; (2) Yes; (3) in most cases, No. If that makes other people call me a ‘denier’, so be it – but I ask them what exactly I am denying. The human race needs to reduce its fossil fuel use for several reasons: we’ll eventually run out; we’ll eventually reach the atmospheric threshold for drowsiness; much of the oil is under regimes that have little respect for our way of life. But, as I said, I question the urgency in the debate today – and I question the economics of the transition we are told we must rapidly make, because energy storage on the necessary scale from renewables is either impossible or unaffordable using known technology. The poor are already suffering from high energy bills in winter and African nations are told they can borrow no money to develop fossil fuel usage and get out of poverty, and worse is to come. Some greens have a more radical social engineering agenda that can be glimpsed by asking them a hypothetical question: if a new source of energy were discovered tomorrow that is clean and creates no CO2, would you regard it as good news or bad news?
March 14, 2024 at 3:27 pm
Hi Anton, thanks for the reply.
I’m under the impression that my attack on Stove and Briggs is being taken as a “guilty by association” charge against you and Peter. This is not the case, and if it seemed that way I apologize.
On Briggs, the main issue for me is that he advocates a position so extreme as to stifle debate, in a manner I believe is incompatible with evidence. He seems to believe this is a non-issue. You have expressed a much more nuanced view of the scientific and politico-economical issues at stake, which I appreciate.
Let me rephrase what I believe is my main point: A) Bayesian epistemology is a booming field in philosophy of science that has been criticizing frequentism for decades, B) The list of authors provided by the organizers contains no name associated with this field bar Jayne’s classic, C) On the other hand the list contains names which are difficult to track who they are and names who are marginal from the academic perspective but popular for their political positions. In light of this I was worried that the Broken Science has a political agenda that they are not saying, that they pick references for their politics, not their science. I thought I could point that out, that Peter would like to know. My first comment tried not to accuse, but to raise an issue. It is clear I have failed.
I don’t want to dismiss your positions on the issue of climate change. I’m not even sure to what extent I disagree with you, it seems that would require further discussion on the empirical data and it’s modeling. But I’ll decline to comment because I believe I have nothing of substantial to add. I will say I agree with you that European countries seem narrowminded on the policy effects on poor people in their own countries and in the third world (Myself living in South America I know it all too well).
You do end with a hypothetical question, which seems unpolite not to respond. I do not understand European politics to know what a “green” position entails. If it helps I’m a plain socialist in the fashion of the logical positivists and the views expressed in the Vienna Circle manifesto. As such, would I regard new technology as good news? Yes.
March 14, 2024 at 5:55 pm
Cesar,
The Broken Science people are on a learning curve, as they freely accept. Much of what they do is give moral and perhaps financial support to scientists who are fully trained within the academic mileieu but are prepared to think outside the box. Have a look at Prof Thomas Seyfried’s marvellous 30-minute talk on the causes of cancer at last year’s conference on the BSI website.
Epistemology as part of the philosophyu of scioence might have plenty to say that does not directly impinge on tyhe probability/Bayesian debate. I don’t know. But I do assert that probability theory done correctly and inductive logic done correctly are one and the same thing, and that plenty of people – phiolosphers and working scientists – don’t do either correctly. Hence there is enduring confusion.
March 14, 2024 at 6:17 pm
PS The methodology (philosophy?) of physical science is simply an Olympian-scale example of hypothesis testing, which when done correctly (Bayesian) is necessarily comparative.
Biology is not intrinsically quantitative, in my opinion, and deserves a separate discussion – although I have no expertise beyond this statement.
March 15, 2024 at 2:13 am
Hi Anton,
It would seem I was too harsh and worried about the Broken Science Initiative. As you describe it, I would take them in good faith, unless given reasons otherwise. Thank you for the recommendation of the talk on cancer, this seems very interesting.
Regarding specific epistemological issues, specifically on probability and induction, I believe we share very similar points on the relation between the two and their importance. With respect to biology, and I may add the social sciences, I think Neurath and Hempel give us reason for guarded optimism
March 12, 2024 at 5:07 pm
PS Popper wrote in other fields of philosophy too. I’m not familiar with that material and have nothing to say about it.
March 13, 2024 at 9:49 pm
Thank you, both Peter and Anton for taking the time to comment.
Concerning the list, I expressed myself poorly. It was clear that the list came from the organization, not from yourself. My previous comment was trying to point out that this list was strange and suggested things about the organizers’ goals and their politics, as you have pointed out. I apologize for the offense.
Regarding Stove, my criticism is not regarding his polemics, but his being light on sources (and I pointed to academic reviews of his books as evidence for this). I’ll take Stove’s thesis to be A) Specific thinkers promoted irrationalism and B) Those thinkers being influential led to irrationalism being widespread (at least in philosophy of science). The problem with the first part is that of the four figures, he mostly argues against Popper and cites statements in a meeting in 1965 to say that all four basically agree. The problem is that Kuhn was called to London to defend his views in a conference in which every other participant bar one was against him and in favor of Popper. So Kuhn’s tone does not represent his philosophical view, but defensive behavior. Lakatos was very different from Popper, but the latter was going to retire and so the former wanting to inherit the position was keen to make himself look like a successor. Once denied the job, Lakatos was much more open about his differences. As for Feyerabend, he repeatedly said that during the 60s he started close to Popper and began to diverge until culminating in Against Method. In light of this, I argue that position A) was not given sufficient reasoning, especially considering the few points to primary sources. As for position B) this is an empirical claim. One would have to look at recent work, and see whether they cite these four authors and if so if they cite them approvingly. Stove did not attempt to do this. My claim here is that if one indeed does this is easy to see that i)Popper was never popular, see for instance The Pseudorationalism of Falsification by Otto Neurath in 1934 and you’ll see people didn’t like Popper from the start. Lakatos died early and his work being very complex never got many followers. Feyerabend is quoted plenty, but from the start in a negative fashion, being praised for specific points but being taken to deny rationality in toto, which nobody wanted to follow. Kuhn is the exception, his work is the most influential of all 4. But read his reception in other authors. He is mostly praised for doing philosophy of science in an empirical way, i.e. looking at history to see whether his theories made sense, but mostly rejected the “paradigm shift” as being too loose a concept to be useful. There is a further part of the influence of Hume’s skepticism on induction. Maybe on Popper, but even he says that Hume goes too far and his work is trying to rescue Kant’s more reasonable position (is in the first chapters of Logik). As such, I would say that Stove’s problem is not the polemic, but that this book is poor scholarship, and therefore not a proper reference to the status quo of philosophy of science. As Anton commented he agrees with Stove’s arguments, I might say that I agree with his conclusions that these four authors are not good, although I would like to praise what is good in them and not discard them in toto as fools, and I even agree with Stove we should go back to the logical positivist, authors who I’m happy have been given much reconsideration in the past 30 years (e.g. Friedrich Stadler, Hans-Joachim Dahms and Nancy Cartwright). I just disagree that his book is good scholarship. One just cannot do so much in so few pages.
Anton commented he met Stove and that he treated well his family. I’m glad to hear. His positions on the intellectual capacity of women being on average less than of men nevertheless are what he wrote. His essay Racial and Other Antagonisms explicitly defends the view that there are biological races, that some of these races are inferior to others in certain behavioral aspects (including intelligence), and that therefore it is reasonable to treat people of different races differently, i.e. is reasonable that an employer refuse to hire a person of a certain race on account of that race inferiority in an aspect of that job. This I called the “races are real” position. Feel free to look for his thoughts on sexuality. Look, I acknowledge I’m beating old Stove here, but my point is that when I saw him in the reading list among people I had never heard of I was suspicious of this initiative’s intentions and politics and I tried to convey that. I thought Peter might like to know.
March 14, 2024 at 10:38 am
David actually wrote that if you were selecting a basketball team in North America then you would prefer blacks over Inuit for reasons that were genetic, not merely cultural. In view of mean height and how basketball is played, is that statement true or false? And he wrote that there was no reason in any genetic difference to treat people better or worse. Regarding race and intelligence, would you please quote him in his own words and give a source?
I disagree with his essay about women but I would like to see the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis tested using empirical data rather than rejected a priori.
In the Anglosphere at least, Popper was regarded AMONG SCIENTISTS as the go-to philosopher of science “if you wanted to get into that stuff”. I was a physicist inside academia at that time, and that was always the view expressed whenever the subject came up. I know he wrote on other subjects and I accept that he might not have been popular among other philosophers of science or outside the Anglosphere. I believe Stove’s critique is fundamentally correct. It is a short book but is founded on two others that Stove wrote about the basis for inductive logic and about Hume’s criticism thereof.
March 14, 2024 at 5:21 pm
Stove in the essay Racial and Other Antagonisms: “”Racism” is the belief that some human races are inferior to others in certain respects, and that it is sometimes proper to make such differences the basis of our behavior towards people. It is this proposition which is nowadays constantly declared to be false, though everyone knows it is true”. Two paragraphs below, just after the basketball reference “If you are recruiting people of business ability in Fiji, you would be mad not to favor Indian Fijians over native Fijians. Any rational person, recruiting an army, will be more interested in Germans than in Italians. If what you want in people is aptitude for forming stable family-ties, you will prefer Italians or Chinese to American Negroes. Pronounced mathematical ability is more likely to occur in an Indian or a Hungarian than in an Australian Aboriginal. If you are recruiting workers, and you value docility above every other trait in a worker, you should prefer Chinese to white Americans. And so on.” Stove’s examples clearly pick mental faculties. Stove does not defend the right to be abusive to other “races”, but the whole essay is about why racial animosity is natural, cannot be dealt with by education and rests on physical and mental differences. This entails that it is rational to use race as a criteria for job selection and immigration, as I said above.
I also disagree with Stove on gender.
I acknowledge that Popper was the go-to name for scientists in certain parts of the world. I do question whether they understood Popper (which notably is in line with Stove). Again, Stove is not primarily a critique, but a history of how irrational thought gets accepted. He says so in the preface. Since this is history, it is an empirical claim. So the question is what was the reception of said four authors? In philosophy of science, I explained above. In science proper it seemed mostly positive. But it also seemed they misunderstood those thinkers. This is a legitimate empirical claim. To show it one way or another one would have to provide primary sources of scientists and examine whether they understood things correctly or not. This was not done either for scientists or philosophers. Stove says the authors employed literary devices to provoke misunderstanding. That might be the case. A historian would look at the reception and see whether people repeat the pattern of argumentation Stove points to. That was not done. Stove proposes himself to do history, neglects all empirical legwork, and contents himself to speculate. This is poor scholarship by the standards of the field. Which I alluded to, per the reception of this work in professional academia. James Robert Brown’s review states that the book is thin on arguments and the only interesting part is the “neutralization of words”, but that would merit only a journal article, not a book. Joseph Agassi’s review states that induction is the establishment in philosophy of science and that Stove represents the said establishment. It goes on to say that the arguments are so poorly reasoned that they constitute just rhetoric. One might agree with Stove and one might think he made a good case. I just object that a book widely took to be bad be used as reference in absentia of any other reference recognized in the field.
March 14, 2024 at 5:48 pm
I don’t think Stove claimed that any such differences were genetic rather than cultural. Everybody knows that there are cultural differences of the type he mentions between people groups. (I am not going to comment on David’s examples.) But the cultural ethos of a people group can change, of course; and in any case people should be judged as individuals regardless of their cultural or racial identity. I don’t think Stove gave a *genetic* example other than the one I cited about height among the people groups represented in North America when picking a basketball team. I recall now that much of the essay was about why racial antagonism was a default among humans, and he sought to understand that default rather than applaud it.
March 15, 2024 at 2:17 am
Re Stove’s position on genetic vs cultural. Still on RaOA, two paragraphs after the list of examples “Nor does it affect the truth of the propositions I have listed, if SOME of the traits in question are MORE culturally determined THAN genetically determined.”(emphasis mine). A direct reading suggests Stove thinks most traits have relevant genetic component, whereas he concedes some may have less. This interpretation can be disputed. He may just have been sloppy. One would have to look at other places for corroboration. The first part of the list of traits reads “Japanese are inferior to Scandinavians in the ability to produce red-headed children. Scandinavians are inferior to African Negroes in the ability to produce frizzy-haired children. A Malaysian is almost certain to be inferior both in height and weight to a Maori. An Ethiopian is more likely than an Eskimo to have a physique adapted for long-distance running. Arabs are less noted for industriousness than Chinese are. If you are recruiting potential basketball champions, you would be mad not to be more interested in American Negroes than in Vietnamese.” Two comments A) The list contains simple biological units (height, weight, hair), behavioral (industrious, docile), and mental (business ability, maths), and B) instead of making a separation (i.e. biological first, then all the mental) he mixes then, indicating that he sees this distinction as of minor importance. Also, in section V Stove states a great skepticism on the effects of education on human behavior. Therefore I contend that the most probable reading of the first passage is that he does think those mental traits to have a genetic component. To know for certain one would have to look at all his other writings where he cites race and possibly biology and see whether those other passages corroborate this reading or refute it. That I won’t do. If Stove thought it was mostly cultural, I cannot find a passage in the text that supports this. If he thought cultural differences are obviously as rigid as he implies he could cite Sociological or Anthropological studies, even just name-dropping authors who supported this point of view. That he did not do. I’m doing this thoroughly to show you that I do not suggest negative things about a man without being able to show their words in context with contested readings noted. That Stove was happy to do so, tarnishing the reputation of four authors, one of them dead, is my main gripe with the man, and why “polemics” is a bad defense for bad scholarship.
I agree people should be judged as individuals not on their racial or cultural identity. Stove didn’t. “They are still traits which are statistically associated with race, well enough, to make race a rational guide in such areas of policy as recruitment or immigration.” Look at the examples, Stove says it is rational to hire a person on account of their race. He didn’t say it’s the only factor. But he insists it is rational.
You mentioned the essay was intended to understand (a descriptive claim) not to applaud (a normative claim) “racial antagonism”. I do not believe this is a most probable reading. The essay opens with statements on “racial antagonism” in history. It then claims that people disliked the phrase and turned to a euphemism, “racial prejudice”. He then argues that recently (at that time) another substitution happened, with “racism”. He claims all three to be the same things and all of them natural to humankind. He shirks making the normative claim that racism is valuable by instead arguing that it is rational to act upon because true. The key here being not the truth of it, but the rational to act upon. If you think this is a disingenuous reading, the last page reveals what are Stove’s worries: “Such remarks as I have quoted from journalists, and the paralysis of our politicians on the subject of immigration, are historical phenomena which are so bizarre that they suggest a nation afflicted with suicidal mania: DEATH-BY-IMMIGRATION being the method adopted.(…)That is, on all present indications, either what we now want, or at least what we are going to get: Australia as the new Manchukuo.” (emphasis mine). Stove took Australia to be threatened by Asian immigrants and racial antagonism as the rational solution. He applauded it.
You mention knowing Stove personally. Maybe he liked putting out controversial ideas in public but was much more agreeable as a person. Maybe his views mellowed later in life. If you say so, I’ll take your word on it. Only having the text, this is all I can say without speculating. Finding out whether a dead man was a bad man cannot do much good. My issue with Stove is that both on politics and on philosophy the man did not care to evidentiade his very bold claims, and is thus not fit as a reference for good methodology.
March 15, 2024 at 9:07 am
It seems we disagree on the isssue of Stove vs Popper; I do not think that his arguments are weak or unreferenced. I think his critics didn’t like his argument and were inaccurate about it.
Stove was making the Bayesian point that if you were hiring a basketball player and had only the information that one candidate was black and the other Inuit then it is rational to choose the former. Of course in practice you always have individual-level information as well. But philosophers are like mathematicians who say that “at least one sheep is black on at least one side” if they observe a black sheep from a train.
Re immigration, there is never a good reason to treat an individual nastily because of his race, and Stove never said there was. At the level of people groups, he considered that if multiculturalists believe it is right for the Punjab to be a homeland for Sikh culture and the Arabian peninsular a homeland for Arab culture, etc, then why should Australia be an experiment for all cultures, rather than a homeland for the culture of Australians that welcomes only limited numbers of others in order to learn from the best aspects of their cultures? There are not many Australians compared to the lands to their north and Australia is more affluent, so sufficient people would wish to migrate south that current Australian culture would change beyond all recognition. That was Stove’s concern. I am not going to judge whether it was well phrased or badly phrased, but the question I have boiled it down to is worth addressing.
March 15, 2024 at 11:47 pm
It seems our disagreement on Stove vs Popper is indeed unbreachable. Since you said critics “didn’t like his arguments and were inaccurate about it” let me just defend the reviewers briefly. Agassi in fact is too harsh, probably on account of being Popper’s student. That I’ll concede. I do think Brown has a measured review, pointing out specific details he didn’t like and commending what he liked. Being myself a critic I’ll point to a specific example of bad methodology by Stove. His only mention of the Duhem-Quine thesis is “In fact, easily the most influential ghost-logical statement of the century is one which is not usually associated with them at all; though they find it congenial, and, as we might have expected, Popper actually anticipated it. This is ‘the Quine-Duhem thesis'” with a reference to Quine and says Popper anticipated it. Now in “Pseudorationalism of Falsification” by Neurath I referenced above, a review of Popper’s Logik, you can find “Out of this whole attitude one can probably explain why Popper – in spite of all the warnings by Duhem -likes so much to speak of the ‘experimentum crucis'” and also “We believe it points to Popper’s basic pseudorationalistic attitude when he comments: ‘For a theory which has been well corroborated can only be superseded (…) by a theory which is better testable and which, in addition, contains the old, well-corroborated theory – or at least a good approximation to it (…).’ Duhem, whom Popper mentions more than once, shows very beautifully with the various stages of gravitation theory how little they can be seen as ‘approximations’ to successive stages.” So Neurath, a logical positivist directly says that Popper rejected Duhem’s thesis (a weaker version of the one by Quine) despite warnings and the context makes clear that all logical positivists accept Duhem’s thesis. For Stove to say Popper anticipated Duhem-Quine when Popper knew of the weaker version and rejected it is historically false. It is even worse for Stove to then laud Carnap who accepted Duhem (but rejected Quine). You might still agree with Stove, and maybe we should let this be, but as a critic, I hold myself to do accurate criticism of his historical methodology.
Re employment and immigration, you offer interpretations of what Stove actually meant. The issue is the difficulty of sourcing him to support those interpretations. Another issue is the context. The first section in RaOA is dedicated to explain why for social reasons people change the wording of their ideas in order to sound more agreeable. The final 2 sections explain why Stove thinks this leads to societal problems and why such changes should be avoided. Note how chapter 2 of Popper and After uses the same strategy, to show how Popper and others use neutralizing words to spread irrationalism. It’s a recurring theme in both works that people should say exactly what they mean without euphemisms or else society suffers. I take from this your interpretations are not the most probable and that we should take my citations of Stove at his words.
Re ethical issue of treating people badly/nastly. I have conceded that Stove does not advocate for the morality of abusive behavior. I could quote Stove himself emphasizing how he is not discussing morality at all. But my previous quotations, as well as more that can be found on RaOA, are explicitly advocating that it is rational to treat people differently based on race regarding employment and immigration. Nowhere does he suggest that one should do so only in case of incomplete information. I have repeatedly avoided broaching A) whether Stove is ethically right or even B)whether Stoke’s positions are worth discussing. Instead, I focused on the empirical question of what Stove actually advanced as positions, which can be answered empirically by quotations, in context, noting ambiguities when they cannot be resolved. This allows us to evaluate whether Stove has given enough evidence for said positions, i.e. whether Stove was an empirically (or scientific) oriented person. Again, my main thesis is that Stove did provide arguments but little evidence for his positions in both RaOA and Popper and After. And so Stove is bad reference for an Institute trying to mend science not because his thesis are untrue but because his methods are poor.
March 16, 2024 at 10:20 am
I agree with Peter’s comments on the Quine-Duhem thesis in his main blog post above.
Re race, obviously I agree with any statement that David published what he published. I am interested in what he thought and meant; haven’t we all wished that we could amend some of our published work in the light of further reflection and/or the constructive critiques of others?
March 16, 2024 at 7:19 pm
Peter’s take on Duhem-Quine are factually incorrect. Please refer to Duhem’s Aim and Structure of Physical Theory or Hempel’s Aspects of Scientific Explanation (indeed cited by Stove who clearly misrepresents it). I’ll summarize: Duhem argues that in physics (but maybe not in other sciences) one cannot compare simple hypothesis and experiment because those simple hypothesis are usually a result of layers of mathematical deduction, so what one compares is the entirety of mathematical arguments and auxiliary hypothesis with experiment. For instance, if one observes an object in the solar system not obeying Kepler’s laws have you disproven Kepler’s laws? Have you disproven Newtonian Gravity? Have you disproven that we have 3 spatial dimensions? Or have you just neglected the influence of other celestial bodies? Simple hypothesis testing can’t tell you, you have to look at the data and the derivation and see if you missed out on something. He does not reject induction in toto, he rejects isolated hypothesis testing. That’s why Peter is right that Duhem poses no issue to a Bayesian, because Duhem is criticising the simplistic induction of late 19th century. That’s also why the logical positivists, who promoted induction, thought Duhem was on their side and frequently cited him as an influence. Duhem says that maybe other sciences who do not rely on mathematical reasoning it is possible that some hypothesis be directly confronted with data, because the heavy usage of maths is something peculiar to physics. A biologist might determine that a given species weight is in the range of 20-40kg and by observing a similar animal weighing at 5kg might, from induction, infere that it is a different species without worrying about auxiliary hypothesis and Duhem would be cool with that. It is Quine that expands it to all sciences, and even ignores that we test subsets of the theory not necessarily the whole of it, something Duhem heard during his life and rejected. Pierre Duhem’s entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia might be a start as it has the direct quotation of Duhem contra Quine (avant-la-lettre). One cannot lift a quotation of Duhem against induction and infer he opposed bayesianism because bayesianism was not a thing in his life. Authors were people who walked the earth and must be understood in the context of their works and in the times they lived in. It is improper to take then for naive fools or irrational without due consideration. You might still want to debate whether he or Quine were right, but first one must state what they actually said, not an interpretation of it, specially coming from Stove, who criticised them. You do not reprehend a Christian taking their views from a Shinto monk.
I understand your views on Stove, it is but natural for us to look back and wish to have stated things in a different manner. That’s why I tried to avoid bringing Stove’s position to our day and debate the merits, and just clarify what his positions were because this is a disagreement that can be solved on evidence, while social questions hardly are resolved on just that. I must say that I wish not to engage with the values that could be taken from more nuanced interpretations of positions in RaOA, it seems not much good will come out of it. If you care for my thoughts, I guess me mentioning being a socialist in latin America is ground for a good guess of my views on the societal issues of our day.
March 16, 2024 at 10:16 pm
Cesar,
I’m not happy with your example for upholding the Quine-Duham thesis. Bear in mind that in astrophysics it is not possible, for obvious reasons, to perform designed interventionist experiment – if I do *this* here, what will be the effect on that there? All you can do in astrophysics is make obervations using better and better technology and heeding smarter theoretical notions of what to observe. Physical science is a quantitative dialectic between theory and designed interventionist experiment, and I am in basic disagreement with Quine-Duhem. By now we physicists are used to being told by philosophers that we don’t know what we are doing, yet somehow physics manages to progress. We haven’t done badly in predicting and measuring the gyromagnetic ratio of the electron, for instance.
March 17, 2024 at 9:54 pm
You are absolutely right that philosophers behave as if scientists are ignorant, try to teach them how to actually do science, and neglect that, despite this, science continues to progress. This is the fact that made me lose hope for philosophy and turn to history and sociology where empirical evidence has its due place. I tried to point out that Duhem-Quine thesis is a historical misnomer that conflates a much weaker with a much stronger claim. You reject the claims as stated by Quine, so do I. But I insist that Duhem is much more plausible and interesting. I won’t quote the man, but you can find in the books I referenced that Duhem gives not only astronomical examples but also ones coming from electromagnetism with the discussion of differences and similarities. You forced me to quote Stove extensively and then asked for a charitable interpretation of what he could have written hypothetically, and yet offer none of this charity to those you disagree with, nor give a single quote. This tragedy has truly become a farce.
If you insist on discussing beliefs, here are mine: A) it won’t help the look of those trying to mend scientific practice by associating with the owner of Crossfit, B) It won’t help to use as prime reference a philosopher that can be shown to be a shoddy researcher by anyone who squints at primary sources and C) It won’t help that, yes, Stove was a bloody bigot.
Let Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, tend to the hearts and souls of those who come to this commentary section. I’ll take my leave.
March 18, 2024 at 12:32 am
Cesar,
Greg Glassman is a convivial host and his support for non-mainstream science such as Thomas Seyfried’s cancer theory and therapy is praiseworthy. Please see Seyfried’s magnificent talk at the 2023 conference by tacking “watch?v=86m0OM0vKwU” onto the usual YouTube URL.
If it’s gloves-off time then I have a high regard for history of science but a low regard for philosophy of science, which seems to me to be mostly either trivial or wrong or wantonly obscure. David Stove took the same view. A bloody bigot? He didn’t mind my disagreement with him about women (which I voiced in person), he loved his wife and daughter, and regarding race you have heard on this thread from his literary executor. He argued in one essay for the best philosopher to be appointed to any new position regardless of any other consideration including race or gender.
I am actually your brother in Christ. I hope we both accept that this transcends our differences.
March 15, 2024 at 2:18 am
PS yet again I press the wrong button. I apologize for the disruption.
March 16, 2024 at 11:37 am
As Stove’s literary executor, I would say he didn’t publish anything racist. He says racist “antagonisms” are in a sense rational – the sense in which people divide into hostile camps so you rationally suspect others are out to get you. He did defend the view that women are on average less intelligent than men – for reasons that can be considered and for which there are substantial reasons against. Allow me to recommend my post-Stovian book of Bayesian philosophy of science: What Science Knows: And How It Knows It (Encounter Books, 2014).
March 16, 2024 at 8:06 pm
Hi professor Franklin, thank you for commenting.
I will not dispute your assertion re Stove’s view on race because it appears you’re making a philosophical argument that relies on what meaning we today ascribe to “racism”. If you look at my exchange with Anton (I know it’s long) you will see how I avoided the philosophical question and was interested in the philological and historical questions in reading Stove’s work and how I support my interpretations of what Stove wrote. I wish not to debate morals.
But since you’re here and you are Stove’s literary executor, please allow me to ask a question I’ve had since I began reading Stove’s work more closely. Are you aware if Stove read Nietzsche and if so if he liked it? I mean, whether Stove liked Nietzsche’s style, prose and method, not whether he agreed with Nietzsche’s worldview. Let me explain, both RaOA and Popper and After have a common theme in method, namely a polemical style and a focus not on the criticism but on the history. It seemed to me both works are attempts at the genealogy of the concepts involved more than in their critique. I took this from his last remark in the preface to Popper and After (I only have access to the first edition if relevant). Both works seem very Nietzschean to me. As I’m interested in philology, knowing an author’s influences is always relevant for clarifying what they meant, and this is why I ask.
March 16, 2024 at 10:06 pm
David praised Nietzsche’s description of Kant as “that catastrophic spider”.
March 16, 2024 at 8:06 pm
PS I keep messing with the response button, sorry for that. And thanks for the book recommendation.